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Samstag, 1. Dezember 2012

Move an existing Apple Mac Os X Installation from an iMac to White Macbook (Moving installation to different Hardware)

Since we had some hardware related issues with an iMac model 2008 we had to bring it to the Apple customer service. As I knew this take some times after they got it fixed but we needed it at work I tried to migrate the existing iMac Lion installation to a white Macbook, both models from 2008.
I thought this would be easy because both have similar hardware and are both from 2008.
After using Disk Utility to create a complete dump from the existing iMac installation I transferred this image to the Macbook but it did not boot. It brought a "Question Mark folder icon" or the "Stop/Prohibitory sign" at boot up and stopped there.
After booting into Single User Mode I learned that it was stuck at the error message:

IOBluetoothHCIController

So I thought maybe the iMac has a bluetooth controller which has been installed into the OS but the white macbook don't so I deleted the kext file but still not booting with the following error message appeared:

'could not find driver for platform AHCI'.

So I thought maybe the kernel extensions are not compatible or the kernel is different...
Messing around with mach_kernels and /System/Library/Extension folder It got me nowhere and I lost a whole business day with no results.
So I tried different things but in the end I found the following solution:
The iMac Lion installation was a very early one 10.7.1 and was never really updated. Also I taught that maybe I have to clean up all the systems caches because the hardware seems to be really different.
So first thing I updated the iMac Lion installation to the latest Mac Os X 10.7.5 and updated all software trough the "Software Updates" program. Then I installed CCleaner and deleted all unnecessary files, languages and repaired the permissions. Then I zeroed out the free space in order to get a smaller dmg. After that I installed Onyx and cleaned out all the system caches (Kernel, Boot, etc). I repaired the permissions with this program once again. After that I created the dmg dump using Disk Utility again and installed it on the white macbook. And it worked! Now it booted up nicely and works 100%.
So in the end I think it was due to some cache files which were still there from the iMac or maybe just the old operating system number.
So what I have learned is if you want to transfer/migrate an existing OS X installation from one mac to another tidy up the system first!!!